A Day at Bititude

I’ve joined Bititude recently, and over the past few days, and in that time, I’ve really come to appreciate the company workflow.

So, I thought I’d write a blog post about our process, the tools we use, the way we code, deploy and work together.

We have a Symbolic 9 to 6 Work setup that is rarely enforced, but generally accepted. Work Time is flexible, though we stick to a pattern, out of familiarity. Most of us Leave late, at around 7PM.

Almost Every Morning, at around 10AM, we have a standup session (which is actually done sitting down). There, we describe the previous day, pending work, etc.

We track the Latest Projects on Github, the Latest Stories on Hacker News and we also use Twitter religiously.

We also browse ProductHunt, as well as the rest, for stuff that could be useful later. We bring up new ideas during the Standup Sessions and throw out more than a few suggestions..

Then, we work on random stuff like the Company Blog, Twitter and other Miscellaneous Evil Marketing Activities in the next hour, from about 10:30AM to 11:00 or 11:15.

Remember, I’m talking about what I do.

Everyone has their own quirks and preferences, and we understand, accept and encourage everyone to work in a way, and time of their choosing.

For me, personally, the first hour of work is limbo. Its like I need to learn about computers all over again, so I setup my Monitors, Twitter, Skype( More on that later ), look up Github and see a few cool projects, etc and then only do I start to code. This may vary.

We understand, accept and encourage everyone to work in a way, and time of their choosing.

At around 11:00, we start coding. We like to use a mixture of Editors and IDE’s.

Most of us use Sublime Text 3 with a smattering of Github’s Atom thrown in there once in a while. For Java ( I know what you’re thinking, but yes, we adjust to anything… ) we use Eclipse and the Excellent Intellij Idea by Jetbrains. For PHP, Ruby, Python, Scala, etc. We use IDE’s like PHPStorm, Rubymine when necessary but most of the work is done in Sublime Text.

We don’t talk much, except during the time when have informal standups, or during code review. Since we have a small workforce, we don’t do pull request based Code Review except when we’re introducing a new developer, as they did with me.

Instead of making each other pull off their headphones and pull out of the Zone™, we use Skype, for IM. We use Teamwork for assigning tasks and organization and Google Apps for Calendar, File Sharing, etc which lets us basically just ping each other when we’re working, without interrupting the coding process.

Now, about the gear we use, We choose our own tools, that is, Mostly Macs and the occasional Linux, and and for accessories, it goes like this.
* Multiple External LED Monitors
* Favourite Keyboard and Mouse/Trackpad
* Headphones – (I recommend the Sony ZR450 but we also use stuff from SolRepublic, Sennheiser, etc)
* Ergonomic Chairs
* High Speed WiFi 6+ Mbps (Which is more than enough for the occasional Github Download, or System Update)

Just In case someone’s laptop is underpowered(Which never happens), we keep a high-end Desktop running Ubuntu in case a new developer needs to be productive right away, or for when we need to test something.

We keep another High End System running Ubuntu Server as a staging server. We use dploy.io and other services and just do a <code>git push</code> to deploy.

We use Amazon AWS and DigitalOcean as our hosts. We use Amazon’s S3 as well. We use AWS for most of the stuff while DigitalOcean hosts our Company website and this blog, mainly for ease of use.

At around 2PM, we have lunch, and chat for sometime. Maybe walk out for a jog, or a quick trip to a café for a quick bite in the Evening.

Then its just code, and more code. We constantly try to improve our workflow, and stay ahead of the curve. We adapt to projects and respond to new ideas.

I don’t think about the past, darling. It distracts from the now

– Edna Mode

I’ve just been here for a day, but I think it’ll be a great journey forward.

We tweet about our workflow and other cool stuff at twitter.com/bititudeTech . You should follow us.
No, you really should follow us.